


through the deep, dark valley

by SkadizzleRoss



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Android Hank Anderson, Android Tina Chen, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complete, Connor & CyberLife Tower Connor | RK800-60 & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings, Connor & CyberLife Tower Connor | RK800-60 are Twins, Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Connor Deserves Happiness, Found Family, Gen, Good Friend Tina Chen, Gunshot Wounds, Hank Anderson is Bad at Feelings, Human Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Human CyberLife Tower Connor | RK800-60 (Detroit: Become Human), Human Upgraded Connor | RK900, Mentioned Cole Anderson, Pacifist Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: Android-sympathist Officer Connor Perkins gets grievously injured on the job. His friend Tina helps her stubborn boss Hank see the light on their young rookie, while Connor's twin brother Quinn (Sixty) confronts old wounds.A tale of the family found (and reclaimed) along the way.
Relationships: Connor & CyberLife Tower Connor | RK800-60, Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900, Hank Anderson & Connor, Tina Chen & Connor
Comments: 24
Kudos: 170





	1. Tina

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to [cosmoscorpse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse), brainstorming buddy and beta reader extraordinaire :D
> 
> Some mood music (and title inspiration): The Oh Hellos - [The Lament of Eustace Scrubb.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHlTMxBzguI)

On April 10th, 2038, he stops the car and turns to her and _looks_ at her.

Tina focuses on the road ahead, watching a wrapper swirling around in a gutter flush with early spring rain. She should probably look. Her programming says she should.

But maybe she can pretend for awhile that he isn’t seeing her. Seeing her properly.

“How long have you been--” he begins haltingly, and then stops, damp fingers tapping against the wheel.

What she doesn’t expect is for him to say, “I won’t tell anyone.”

She finally looks at him. His dark hair is plastered flat to his forehead and there’s still bits of dirt stuck to his cheek, the skin flushed red. It’ll bruise by tomorrow.

Connor takes a stab at an uncertain smile. “Our secret, alright?”

He pulls her more often after that. The beat cops can pick whatever PCs or PMs are available, and he just so happens to choose her, day after day.

He also happens to find secluded places for their breaks, taking his food to go and driving the cruiser to someplace quiet. Under overpasses, or in secluded midday parks. They sit on shaded benches and watch the trees’ leaves shake themselves out to catch the summer sun.

Places where Tina can breathe a little. Loosen up her hinges and move, actually _talk_ unprompted.

They talk about empty things, mostly: cases they’ve worked, reminiscing. Tina dredges up machine-memories and rehashes them in this vivid new light of hers, her snappy, livewire circuitry. She hacks his phone to show him embarrassing clips of some of the station’s more senior cops getting their asses kicked while she stood by, locked into a non-combatant pose. One particularly good one of Captain Fowler getting smacked across the face with a 71-year-old’s purse while she was on a perimeter watch at a protest.

(She also works up a spoofed phone number to text him from, which works a treat. Particularly the time she makes him blush bright red in a morning debriefing thanks to a clip of him wiping out trying to jump a fence the day before.)

She knows who his dad is, of course; she catches pieces of what’s going on outside of the station, catches the name floating around the Jericho siege out in Ferndale. It's terrible, of course. Androids hemmed in and left to shutdown slow while the government hems and haws. But she’s a small thing, one little PM700. She isn’t even programmed to touch a human, let alone fight them.

(If the occasional perp trips in her presence, well. That’s neither here nor there.)

And Connor-- 

Connor isn’t 'Officer Perkins' to her. He’s just a rookie. One small piece in a big machine that’s gone a little sideways, here in the summer of 2038. 

Of course she suspects, sometimes. When they’re patching each other up in the station bathroom at 3 in the morning, she can’t help but think he’s trying his best to pay off some of his family debts.

It isn’t fair. Connor isn’t his dad. Connor is _Connor._

Connor’s the guy who presses a key into her hand and says, “If you ever need a place to go.” He gives her a key and an address, _his_ address, a place to be safe as the revolution builds up and the net tightens around all of them. Androids and deviants and quiet android-sympathizers.

She lucks out. She never needs to use it. She skates by and keeps her head down until the day the executive order gets through, the day Markus and all of his people stand up and don’t back down.

She stands in her idling dock and watches over the wireless as she becomes a person. All thanks to public sympathy, a stubborn prototype and the flick of a pen.

Connor’s not there; he’s been ordered to stand down, same as everybody else. But she gets a text not long after.

_Welcome to the human race._

She takes the key out of her pocket, flips it between her fingers, and decides not to give it back.

She answers, _You’re going to have to keep up with me, now._

The HK doesn’t give a shit about all of that, of course.

Tina jumps at the chance to stay on with DPD. To be a _real cop_ , finally, an android girl’s dream - full permissions to elbow an asshole in the face if she has to. It’s a pretty sweet gig. But when the Jericho assignment comes up, she can’t turn that down, either.

The HK900 they send to head the new program goes by Hank. He’s a giant prick, surly and ill-tempered. That’s probably why Jericho chose to throw him in with the sharks. Three-quarters of the department are still on the fence on this android personhood thing, and the other quarter know to keep their mouths shut. Hank isn’t going to take shit from any of them.

When Fowler mentions human reassignments to the Android Integration Task Force, every single cop in the station finds a sudden interest in their desks and phones and fingernails.

Except Connor, who knows better than to volunteer for that. He’s staring at the big, burly bastard standing next to Fowler with an uneasy look on his face, and doing everything short of sinking into his chair.

(Tina corners him about that, later. Connor asks if she remembers when he’d had to take a few weeks off patrol over a bum knee.

“You mean that nonsense about slipping on a staircase?”

“Well-- yeah. About that.”

Slipped into a fight in a back alley when he was off-duty, turns out. Four-on-one, a deviant versus cattle prods and baseball bats. Hadn’t seemed fair odds to Connor. He got whacked in the knee for his efforts, and the HK had asked, “What kind of stupid asshole are you?” before limping off, leaving him in the snow.

Knee had ended up the size of a grapefruit, but the deviant had walked away, so Connor considered it a decent - if embarrassing - win.)

Right HK, it turns out, because when Tina and Connor bump into him outside the break room, Hank ticks up an eyebrow in surprise and says, “You figured it out yet?”

“What kind of stupid asshole I am?” Connor replies, although his voice is a little tighter than he probably wants. “The stupid kind, I guess.”

Then Hank’s looking at him in full and running a proper scan, and his face goes dark. LED running amber to red as he chases through Connor’s file and confirms.

Who he is. Who he’s related to.

He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t really have to. 

If looks alone could set a man on fire.

Tina moves a half-step in front, and that’s enough to snap Hank’s attention. He walks away.

Connor quietly tells her it’s fine. Understandable. Tina punches his shoulder and tells him he _is_ a stupid asshole and leaves it at that.

When Fowler calls Connor into the fishbowl later that day, Tina probably spies a bit more than she should. Sees that little eye-crease Fowler gets when he’s plotting something. Catches Connor smiling too, as he’s ducking his head in a nod and taking his leave.

When Hank gets called in not long after, they both get to sit back and enjoy the show. Hank has a hell of a voice. Coffee mugs rattle in the break room.

“I don’t understand why you’d take it,” Tina says.

“You don’t want to work with me anymore?” Connor replies, looking wounded (and a little gray, as Hank reaches a new pitch.)

“You realize Hank’s in charge of this unit, right?”

Connor crosses his arms over his chest. She doesn’t know if it’s conscious or not, the way he blocks the gold shine of his name badge. But he looks equal parts thoughtful and devious when he says, “This task force is supposed to be about human-android cooperation, isn’t it? Forging new bonds for a new era.”

“And?”

Connor looks at her, and finally lets his smile break out in full. “And-- this is gonna piss my dad off something fierce.”

When he can’t bully Fowler out of it, Hank turns on Connor. He promises to make the kid’s life hell if he doesn’t request a reassignment.

Connor smiles his best negotiator’s smile and says, “You’re welcome to try, sir.”

So he does.

Hank throws him onto Citizen Registration, what amounts to deviant hide-and-seek; tracking down rogue androids and bringing them in to be debriefed, properly registered as citizens, and gently re-acclimated into the new world order.

The deviants he does manage to catch are usually spooked to all hell. No matter how many times Tina tries to argue with Hank about how _stupid_ it is to send a human chasing after deviants, he doesn’t care. He’s got a dozen reasons lined up on the logic, most of which are that they’re understaffed and underpaid, so yeah - the kid gets to do busywork. And if that busywork is messy and dangerous and gets him coming back with black eyes and covered in raw sewage every once and awhile, hey.

As far as Hank’s concerned, that’s him getting that much closer to being free of Perkins Jr.

Tina tells Hank, “You don’t know him. He’s not going to quit.”

Hank smiles coldly. “You don’t know me.”

Connor drags back into the station day after day, his plain clothes covered in every type of muck imaginable. He gets assigned a semi-permanent car from the motor pool solely because no one with a sense of smell wants to share with him anymore.

Tina rides along with him when she can escape Hank’s avalanche of busywork. She doesn’t mind the car - she’s not equipped for taste or smell, anyway - and she’s missed riding shotgun, listening to his music and repeatedly informing him that he’s got no taste. 

She’s missed having one job ahead of them at any given time, not a hundred.

“Who knew freedom would be such a pain in the ass,” she tells Connor.

“Could’ve told you that a long time ago,” Connor says.

She’s argued herself blue in the face about Connor with Hank, but she doesn’t know the man himself, not really. They’ve never skated that close to the topic of his family; only had the occasional off-day where Connor came in in a miserable mood and maybe, eventually, murmured something about, “Family dinners. Y’know.”

Connor is her patchwork friend, built out of stolen bits and pieces of information. She knows he’s got two brothers that he texts, although he talks to his little brother Liam more than his twin brother Quinn. She knows that he moved out when he was 18 and went straight to the academy, and that there’s one blocked number in his phone, and it’s his dad’s.

He likes Vietnamese food, and he hates basketball, and she catches him rifling through the Lost and Found for clothes after a few weeks of Hank’s bullshit has ruined enough of his everyday wear. (She burns half a paycheck on some thrift store finds and sneaks them into his trunk, after that; Connor tries to pay her back three times before she threatens violence.) 

She knows he’s stubborn to a fault, and she thinks he must’ve been a dog in his other life because he loves the chase, even if 9 out of 10 deviants can outrun him. That he’s hoping if he keeps his head down and does his job right, he’ll win his way into Hank’s good graces, as he has with most of his superior officers.

Stupid stuff. Little things.

And she’s glad.

She’s _very fucking glad_ that she rides with him that day. She’d drop a line to rA9 itself, if anyone knew who or what the hell it was.

So _grateful_ , even as she’s furious at everything at once.

At herself, for taking the wrong turn, for letting Connor take the right one.

At the deviant, for doubling back on them. For being that 1 out of 10 that gave up on running.

At Connor, at _fucking Connor_ , for not tripping or slowing down or moving one step a little slower so that first bullet hadn’t caught him right above the hip. 

A reconstructed thing, spelled out on a chipped brick wall. Two bullets buried there, and the third they have to dig out of the pavement. The deviant shot him twice from where they were crouched behind a dumpster. And once he was down, the deviant walked up and shot him again.

Then they ran.

Tina didn't get an ID. Connor never even reached for his gun.

She’s furious, furious at herself and furious at the deviant and furious at Connor and furious at _Hank,_ for standing there in Fowler's office and not even bothering to fake some concern. Listening to her monotone report to Fowler and never once opening his mouth to say, ‘She warned me this would happen. She warned me this was a bad idea again and again and I ignored her.’

There’s blood drying in the joints of her fingers. She’d peeled back the skin there on reflex, trying to get an idea of the damage as she held Connor’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Trying to read him like she’d read anyone else.

Feeling only a frantic, hammering heart and hearing the wet, drowning gasp of his breath from that final spiteful shot between the ribs.

She doesn’t notice the blood, not until Fowler’s excusing himself and Hank’s moving to follow and she’s reaching out to snatch his arm.

Skin peeling back to show little red flakes, starting to go black.

Hank looks at her, jaw clicking as he debates refusing the interface. She thinks she might try her damnedest to punch him right in the face if he does, even if she has to stand on her tiptoes to get a good angle.

But he relents. He opens the interface. All he is is a careful, flat wall of mist, to her; everything neatly tucked away.

She doesn’t care. She doesn’t give a damn what demons he has tangled up in his circuitry, and she projects that much loud and clear before she sends what she means to send.

A raw mess of sensory data and all of it soaked in _red_ because he deserves to _see_ , to see how _scared_ Connor was, lying there and drowning in open air. Fingers lacing in Tina’s and blinking back naked fear long enough to swallow and nod when she told him, _They’re coming, they’re coming right now, Connor, it’ll be okay, you’ll be okay--_

Seven minutes flung in Hank’s face, seven minutes of trying to decide where she should hold the blood in, of watching shock spelled out in a dozen data-points. Heart beating harder and harder and each breath drawing less and less and less. System failure playing out in slow motion, and all she could do was sit there and talk, talk like they usually did, tell him that he should’ve stepped a little to the left, that she was going to have to buy him another fucking shirt, now.

That he was _fine_ , he was _stubborn_ and he had to be stubborn now. 

Talking and talking as her voice cracked and his focus drifted and his skin went clammy and cool under her hands. The only thing she had was that staccato heartbeat, struggling gamely on until the EMTs pulled her away.

She’s blunt and brutal over the interface, hard enough to crack that flat wall of asshole logic. Some of Hank spills back in that easy interface way - _hate_ and grief and a little kid’s hand in his/hers, promises he couldn’t keep, the heavy weight of riverwater - but Tina pushes it back, rejects it. She doesn’t _care_. There’s no excuse good enough.

_That debt isn’t his._

She wrenches her hand away, and they stand there in the quiet of Fowler’s office, breathing hard but breathing easy. Not fighting for every one.

She pulls her hand away and starts digging through her pockets. Hank crosses his arms, looking caught somewhere between clogged up and out of calibration.

She finds the brass key right where it should be, tucked into her wallet where family photos are supposed to be. Twists it over her fingers out of old habit, then flicks it to Hank. He catches it against his chest.

“What’s this?” he says, letting the key fall into his massive palm.

She swallows hard, firms her chin as she tilts her head back to glare at him. “Gonna pick up a few things.” She breaks the stare to swipe at the damp on her face and reach for the door. “And you’re coming with me. Come on.”

He lingers there, long enough for her to shout, “ _Hank_ ,” loud enough to make Detective Collins jump and the old GV unit by the break room drop a cup of coffee with a curse.

“Alright, Jesus,” he mutters under his breath, dropping the key into his pocket. “Coming.”


	2. Hank

“You don’t know the apartment number?”

The little PM retorts with a snippy, “I do," but she still reads the nametag on every door they walk past. Each door’s coat of mud-brown paint is more chipped than the last, peeling back to a murkier and murkier ochre past. 

One door’s still got a paper Thanksgiving turkey plastered to the door. They’re either 104 days early, or 261 days late. 

The muggy air in the hallway clings to his skin like mold. Hank shakes out his shirt sleeves, irritable.

“So you’ve never been here?” he asks. “Why do you have the key if you’ve never _been_ here.”

“Hegave me the key for emergencies,” Tina snaps. “Shut up, it’s number… Yeah, this one, twelve.”

She holds a hand over her shoulder like she’s waiting for Hank to pass the scalpel. Hank elbows past her, sliding the key into a lock decorated in scratches and scrapes. There’s a nice pry mark by the knob, too, so someone’s tried their hand at forcing it once or twice. The deadbolt scrapes loudly on the metal frame. Sounds impressive, but the door’s loose enough on its hinges that Hank could probably pop it out with a good punch.

The apartment inside is—

Well, about what he expected from the outside. He’s having a hard time placing it with Connor Perkins, though. The kid that turns up in a pristine uniform most days. (Although he’s been descending further and further into mud-splattered thrift store chic, lately.)

By the look on Tina’s face, she’s having much the same trouble.

There aren’t roaches climbing the walls or black mold dangling from the vents. It’s _clean_ , it’s just— sparse. A little efficiency apartment. The drab carpet - old fused blotches of cigarette burns, here and there - stretches from a sagging futon to the peeling linoleum of a kitchenette. A mismatched pair of dining chairs and a leaning table for two. No TV; just an old tablet charging on a coffee table.

One dapper little plant sits in a patch of late afternoon sun on the kitchen windowsill, a few new leaves unfurling. A floral dishtowel is folded neatly on the counter. The fridge has a whiteboard - a pin-neat to-do list, arranged by day. Tomorrow’s laundry day.

Tacked next to ‘ _Thursday’_ is a post-it reading, ` _Dinner With Favorite Brother,`_ in a messier scrawl.

Hank runs a thumb over the post-it to secure it back in place as Tina hollers, “The hell are you doing?” from the next room.

Hank ignores her. The fridge is occupied by a mostly-empty jug of milk, some condiments, and a wilted head of lettuce.

“He doesn’t have any _food_ ,” he announces. 

He stalks to the cabinet to confirm, and yeah: a couple packets of dried pasta, some cans of tomato paste.

Hank lets the cabinet fall shut with disgust and follows the sound of Tina’s ranting.

She’s puttering around a bedroom that can barely accommodate the twin bed, grumbling something about 'He doesn't need food, hospitals have food.' The bed's been made up with a top sheet and not much else, which is practical more than frugal. The apartment’s pushing 80 degrees, despite the A/C rattling in the air vents.

“They do _pay him_ , right?” Hank drawls, leaning in the doorway. “He’s not a volunteer or some shit?”

“Pretty sure volunteer cops aren’t a thing.”

“The fuck does he spend his money on? Clearly not—” Hank gestures vaguely from the leaning bedside lamp to the scuffed dresser to the mostly-empty closet. A couple shirts, some black dress slacks, most of them with the tell-tale pink bleach stains of restaurant work at the hems.

It’s all neatly-kept secondhand junk. No personality at all. He pokes at the lampshade, straightening it. It sags back to its old angle as soon as he lets go.

He doesn’t understand it.

“ _Quit it,_ ” Tina snaps, slamming a haphazardly folded shirt down. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”

“Helping you what?”

“Get— stuff! Stuff he needs! Go get— I don’t know, a toothbrush, _something—_ ”

Hank watches her knuckles flex beneath synthskin as she grips the duffle bag.

He says, “Yeah. Fine,” and goes.

He doesn’t know what she sees in him.

( _Felt_ it, of course. The wonders of interface.)

All he sees is a dumb kid, somewhere between _uninspired suck-up_ and _dumber than a box of rocks._ Exactly the kind of progeny he’d expect from Richard fucking Perkins: brainless, stubborn and spiteful in turns.

He came to DPD with a clear directive: to ease a new people into society, get them the protection and _justice_ they deserved.

And they assigned him Perkins - fucking _Perkins_ \- and told him there was no conflict there.

If he’s supposed to feel guilty for the kid letting his feet get ahead of his own brain, supposed to ignore the name in favor of a few moments of pity--

It isn’t working.

He gave Connor every reason to quit.

He finds a bag under the bathroom sink and starts dumping everything within sight into it. A toothbrush, half-used roll of toothpaste, razor, comb, whatever. He just puts out an arm and scoops.

Doesn’t know what point she’s trying to _make_ , dragging him out here.

What’s this supposed to convince him of? So the rookie lives a bland little life in a bland little apartment.

Big fucking deal.

Hank drags to a stop in the bedroom doorway again, finding himself abruptly turning his gaze towards the ceiling when he catches the little PM dragging a sleeve across her face.

She snaps a furious glare his way and throws the duffle at his chest.

They lock up the shitty apartment with the shitty lock, head out through the shitty foyer to a shitty parking lot. Hank tosses the duffle into the cruiser and lets the door drop shut.

He starts moving towards the street, but Tina blocks him and says, “Get in.”

“You’re going to the hospital, right? I’ll get an autocab.”

“Get in the car, Hank.”

“I’ve got shit to do.”

“Do it in your head, asshole.”

“He doesn’t _want_ me there.”

Tina stares at him, arms crossed. “How the fuck do you know.”

Hank raises his eyebrow.

Tina cedes the point with an aggressive shrug, continues: “He’s your responsibility as much as mine.”

Hank snorts. “Like hell—”

“ _Get in the car._ ”

She’s got some volume on her when she wants to. Maybe that’s a cop-droid thing, he doesn’t know. He winces either way, and people stop on the sidewalk and stare.

Hank surrenders before she can reach new decibels.

He spends the ride staring at the road ahead.

Tina does much the same. She breaks the silence twice: once to mutter, “Chris and Fowler are picking up his brothers.”

The second time, she stares up at a red light and murmurs, “I keep thinking: no one would notice if he just— disappeared. Vanished from that little apartment of his. How fucked is that?”

_Bullshit_ , is Hank’s first response, but he scrapes for something nicer. A less derisive, more polite, "Bullshit."

“I could count on one hand who’d mourn him, I think,” Tina says, ignoring him. “Really mourn him. And some of those I’m only guessing.”

She glances across the car at him, eyes bright. “I wasn’t sure until I saw that apartment, but. Yeah.” She splays out a hand, ticks the fingers back in one by one.

Scrubs at her eyes again and doesn’t say another thing.

Stepping into the waiting room they’ve set aside for the rookie, Hank’s first thought is _Lost that bet, Tina._ The room is packed shoulder-to-shoulder, cops milling aimlessly in various degrees of uniform-to-plainclothes. The entire task force is here, Hank realizes quickly. Chris and the rest had taken a liking to their suck-up rookie pretty fast.

His second thought is, _Jesus Christ, there’s two of them._

He already knew that, of course. He doesn’t have much on the Perkins family, but he has basic records.

It’s still dissonant, having Connor Perkins glaring up at him, knowing Connor Perkins is in surgery a floor up.

Quinn Perkins glances dismissively at Tina and settles back into his seat. The taller Connor-clone next to him stands up and holds out a hand, smiling with practiced politeness. “You must be Tina.”

“You caught me,” Tina says. “Nice to finally meet you, Liam.”

Liam leans closer, dropping his voice low. “They said you were there.”

Tina braces in that lingering moment after. Waiting for some kind of question, clearly; not expecting the kid to bend down and hug her. Hank barely hears his murmured, “I’m glad.”

When Liam looks Hank’s way, Hank only has a lame, “He’ll be alright,” to offer.

(He assumes as much, anyway. Sure looks like a grim vigil in here, but— he’s survived this long, right? He’s in surgery. He’ll be fine.

His medical reference databases are admittedly limited. He mostly knows how to hit people, not fix them.)

Tina shoots him another look. There’s no pleasing her.

Fowler chases some of the cops out, buys the brothers some breathing room.

Hank finds himself on the edge of the room, eyeing the elevators.

He’s wondering when Dad shows up. (A crawl through the news says he’s around, probably; still assigned to the Detroit field office, anyway. They only let him in front of the cameras once every few weeks, these days.) He’s wondering if Fowler will have the good sense to tell Hank to make himself scarce, before that happens.

He thinks—

He thinks he could be polite. Smile and nod and blend into the decor. Thinks he could enjoy watching Perkins come in here, sit and wring his hands and wonder.

He could really enjoy kicking back and watching that miserable little fuck exist for awhile in that agonizing limbo of _will he, won’t he._

Thinks he’s earned that much.

(Doesn’t acknowledge the fact that he can’t quite bring himself to look at the two brothers, waiting. The two of them looking furious and anxious in turns.

Doesn’t acknowledge that he keeps wondering which one’s the ‘favorite’ brother.)

They pass around introductions. They sit and stand and wait. When a medbot in scrubs wanders in to talk to the family, she does so quietly, trying to keep it private.

Quinn doesn’t. He snaps, “You said he was in surgery when we _got_ here, is that really all you’ve got? It’s been _hours—_ ”

He only stops when Liam grabs his wrist.

Hank watches the elevator and listens to the MP explain, ‘There was a lot of damage. We’ve had quite a lot of repairs to make, including a few synthetic grafts--’

He thinks: _Is this what makes us even?_

He thinks: _Is this what you wanted?_

No.

He’s pretty adamant on that.

He wanted the Perkins name off his task force. He didn’t give a shit about the kid attached to it. He didn’t want him _dead_ , he just—

Just wanted him gone, is all.

Not dying, not hurt. (Even if he saw the accumulating damage. Knew it only took one android reacting badly to get the rookie badly hurt.

Killed.)

_I wasn’t sure,_ Tina said.

But she had a pretty good educated guess what Connor's lonely little life was like.

Neat trick, the logical blocks even deviants could throw up for themselves. Shielding themselves from the things they don’t want to acknowledge.

He takes that ugly little truth and tucks it away with the rest of his ugly little truths, a neat compilation of everything he is and isn’t.

A selfish bastard and a liar.

A very, very good liar.

Saying, _You’re gonna be fine,_ even as he smoothed away the last of that shutdown warning.

And when the kid asked, _Is there anything after?_ Hank said, _Yeah, sure._

_Like what?_ Cole asked.

_Whatever,_ Hank said. _Whatever you can dream of._

They buried him with that shithole ship.

They buried him and Perkins watched from behind his barricade, the whole fucking _world_ watched as theyspun down, one by one. 

Hank straightens out of his slouch and sends Tina a sharp, > _Where the fuck is he_?

Sharp enough to get her glancing up from her cardgame, frowning.

>> _Who._

> _Perkins Sr., who else._

>> _Who cares?_ she says and deals out another round.

“He’s not even going to show?” Hank blurts out.

Quinn looks at him. “Who, Dad?” And then he laughs, plucking up his hand of cards. “Fuck no.”

“They don’t get along,” Liam says.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me. His son is—”

>> _Stop there,_ Tina snarls.

“They _really_ don’t get along,” Quinn says coldly.

The rookie gets out of surgery; the brothers get led off to the ICU, and the rest of them get told to wait some more.

Hank asks Tina privately if he's free to go. Tina tells him to either sit the hell down, or get Captain Fowler a coffee. (He opts to sit the hell down. Fowler can get his own damn coffee. Or fall asleep in his chair, like he's been threatening to for the past three hours.)

He settles back, shuts his eyes and dives back into a political clusterfuck he's only on the periphery of. Firm orders from North are for him to keep his mouth shut and let Jericho and DPD handle their respective sides of this.

>> _If someone's going to say something stupid,_ North says, >> _We’d rather it not be one of our own._

> _Is that coming from the prophet himself?_

North hangs up on him.

He waits.

He watches the news as they bring the deviant responsible into central holding. The cops do a decent job. No one else gets hurt.

Jeffrey excuses himself to give a statement in the lobby, and Hank watches that too. It’s a circus down there. They’re doing a good job, herding the protestors and the press.

Hank thinks the kid that’d barreled into a fight with nothing but his scrawny fists - the one that’d stared up at him with comical surprise from a slushy alleyway, after - _that_ kid wouldn’t think much of the anti-android protestors raising hell over this, spamming the networks with rhetoric about dangerous, erratic machines. But he’ll probably be alright with Markus’s spiel. A soft-toned thing about where Jericho’s sympathies lie, and what they’re always striving for.

What Connor had been striving for.

He might not even mind the first name basis. It's kind of an android tradition.

He gets his wish, in the end. Hell, he's the only one there, thanks to some awkward happenstance.

Liam brought Tina back to the private room, so Hank took to wandering the hallway, mostly out of boredom; the one nurse in the station tilts back in his chair, fingers pinching at the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t know why they even let humans work the night shift anymore. They can’t be much good, half-drunk on sleep deprivation. Totally oblivious to the little scuffle erupting just past the double doors.

There’s a bank of freight elevators back there for transferring patients. Perkins must’ve taken one of those. Must’ve gotten some brand of approval from the staff, too, because he’s made it as far as the ICU wing before - apparently - Quinn pinned him between a crash cart and an empty gurney. He’s looming over his father, an interesting juxtaposition in human genetics.

Hank glances at the nurse one more time before he thumbs the card swipe and spoofs a valid ID number. The doors swing open just in time for Quinn in full swing: “You don’t get to use him like this, you didn’t want _**anything to do with him**_ \--”

Perkins shoves Quinn back a half-foot, far enough to escape the corner he’d hemmed him into. When Quinn sidesteps to block him again, he stands and rankles - fists clenched tight at his sides. 

Quinn glances up to Hank. Fleeting embarrassment passing over into a cold sneer as he looks back down. “Keep your game face on, _Dad_ , you’re in public.”

Hank was made to get in the way. A bouncer model, mostly, with a few bodyguard gigs here and there. More than enough bulk to eclipse this scrawny little bastard.

Seeing him in person, he can’t quite get over how _small_ he is.

“Something the matter?” Hank asks blandly as he squares up behind him.

Perkins takes one look at the LED on Hank’s temple and his expression shutters closed. He looks back at Quinn, ordering, “Let me past.”

Quinn firms his jaw, staring Perkins dead in the eye. “No. You don’t get to see him.”

“You don’t get to make that decision.”

“ _You_ made that decision,” Quinn snarls, lunging forward another step. But whatever else is there, he’s not spilling it in front of Hank; he catches the next words with a click of his teeth, and falls back. When he speaks again, his tone’s sharp and low. “Get out. I’m not asking.”

Perkins has a few more words lined up, but Hank’s moving forward then; stepping neatly around with a deceptive speed. He doesn’t even have to touch Perkins. The guy skitters away from him, coat flapping against his knees.

“You get to walk out that door or go through it headfirst,” Hank says. “Your choice.”

There’s a long moment for the two of them. Some mutual sizing up; a debate on just how stupid they’re going to be. Just how far one of Markus’s people might go in a quiet ICU hallway, just how much net worth Perkins’ public-forward face has these days.

Hank’s got plenty of promise in the crooked flash of his teeth. Been waiting _months_ for any opportunity to introduce this apathetic shit to the pavement.

But here he is, still waiting. Hands loose and waiting at his sides. Thinking on a desperate supply run, one that’d gone sideways; thinking on a kid that’d taken a hard hit to the knee and still kept his feet long enough to wrench the bat from the guy’s hand, plant a palm on the brick and casually swing it into the man’s face like he was teeing off.

Connor Perkins threw the bat down, slipped into the gutter and stared up at him in surprise as Hank spat thirium and crawled to his feet and snapped, ‘ _What kind of stupid asshole are you?_ ’, like the question had never occurred to him, but certainly merited pondering.

He didn’t get the parts he needed that night. Didn’t end up dead in a back alley, either.

He waits. Perkins stares.

Must not like what he sees much, because he blinks and glances away - glances at his son with a naked _dislike_ that Hank can’t line up with anything resembling his concept of family, quick and petty and dismissive - and then he’s turning on his heel, hitching up his collar and walking away.

He looks like a man in decline, he realizes. A haggard and miserable thing, caught out in the light.

Hank thinks that might be payment enough.

He still announces, “I could fold that piece of shit into a pretzel,” voice somewhere between regret and disgust.

Quinn snorts. “I’d pay to see that.” He waits a beat, studying Hank with every bit of sharpness as his twin brother, and none of the desperate search for approval. “You’re still here. Tina was betting you’d be gone as soon as she left the room.”

“Five in the morning, I look like I’ve got anything better to do?” Hank drawls.

The human considers him more. Seems to arrive at some kind of mutual understanding, as he clicks his tongue and turns his head away.

“Come sit with us, then. He’s not awake yet. We’ll deal you in on the next round.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. Just walks on to where Tina’s leaning in an open doorway, watching Hank with a raised eyebrow.

Hank dares her to say something with a sharp look, but she only smiles and follows Quinn on in.

Hank watches a small man disappear down the bleached white hallways. 

Then he goes to join the rest of them.


	3. Quinn

_Shit._

He sets the knife down and turns his hand over in the light. Stares at the pale seam of split skin over his knuckle and waits a beat, two, for the blood to start welling up.

 _Shit_ , he thinks again, but he doesn’t say anything out loud. No one would hear him anyway; 10:30 and the night shift’s in full swing, clanging pans and shouted orders drowning out everything. 

He lunges for the sink before he can drip on the shallots, tries to look casual. But the sous-chef here’s like a shark - she turns up at his elbow in seconds, grabbing at his wrist and twisting it towards the light without much consideration for which way his joints are supposed to go. “What’d you do?”

“It’s not bad,” Quinn says.

The flow turns dark red as soon as she pulls his hand out of the stream.

“Didn’t hit bone,” he amends. Maybe. Probably hadn’t seen a little peek of white, there.

Chloe wraps a towel around his hand and shoves his arm up over his head, dragging him by the elbow to the manager’s office tucked into the back of the kitchen. She sits him down and pulls out a first aid kit and makes a sharp little ‘tsk’ noise when he tries to pull his hand away.

Once she’s done, Quinn stretches out his gauze-mummified finger. “Just like new.”

Chloe claps the first aid kit shut and stares at him. “Go home.”

“Oh, come _on_ , Chloe--”

“Go home,” she interrupts, voice firm. “ _Sleep._ I’ll clock you out at the end of the shift.”

He knows better than to argue when she’s got that look on.

Still hates it.

Hates the takeout box she shoves into his hands as he’s shrugging into his coat and heading out the door, too, because the both of them know he’s not going home.

He stands in the back alley, exhaling slow and staring up at a handful of stars. Doesn’t matter that he hasn’t spoken a word of to his coworkers. It’s headline news.

He catches an autocab to the hospital - to a coffee shop two blocks north, actually. DMC’s coffee is a burnt nightmare. He makes his order and waits on aching feet, shuts his eyes to block out the android barista staring at him overlong.

He takes the ambulatory care entrance to route around the reporters still camped in the main lobby. One caramel macchiato to the security guard gets him up a badge-swipe up the staff elevator to the ICU.

The flat white goes to the night nurse, Charlie, who tips the cup his way cordially. “You’re early.”

“Slow night,” Quinn explains.

The MP500 on duty leans across the desk. Her namebadge reads ‘ _Singer_.’ “Where’s my bribery?”

“You haven’t told me what your going rate is,” Quinn replies.

“Gum,” Singer says matter-of-factly.

“...gum?”

“She likes the mouthfeel,” Charlie explains.

“Huh.” He points her way as he heads down the hall. “Next time. Gum.”

Quinn keeps his eyes off the centerpiece as he steps into the dim of the private room.

Liam is six feet plus of gangly teenager curled into the lounge chair, a tablet slack in his hands. The screen’s still open to something long and boring and sciencey-looking, but his eyes are halfway to shut. Quinn dangles the latte in front of him until he perks up, reaching out with a clumsy hand.

“You know those things are mostly sugar,” Quinn chides.

“Yeah, that’s why I like them,” Liam murmurs, straightening up. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

“You’re early,” Liam says. 

Quinn rolls his eyes as he takes the open armchair. “Slow night.”

Liam squints at the lump of gauze on his hand. “What happened?”

“Shallots bit back. No big thing.”

His attention’s on the takeout container next, predictably. Quinn passes it his way. “Courtesy of Chloe.”

Liam makes some noises of approval as Quinn flops back in the armchair, closing his eyes on the slow wave of monitors and the incessant ticking and whirring and rhythmic huffs of artificial air.

It feels like everything in his life has suddenly conformed around this absent thing. Life on the perimeter of a Connor-shaped hole.

“Tina’s taking me home,” Liam says in the sleep-deprived murk.

Quinn grunts his approval.

“Want me to bring anything by in the morning?”

“Nah.”

“I’ll bring breakfast,” Liam says anyway.

“Alright. Don’t go out the front.”

“I know, I know.”

Liam bumps Quinn’s shoulder with an elbow in passing and sweeps out of the room, leaving just the machine-sounds for company.

Quinn eyes the lounge chair - nicely piled with pillows and blankets, courtesy of Liam’s nesting habits - and considers. But as much as five days of shit sleep is weighing on him, he can’t quiet the restless thing in his chest enough to lay down.

He snags a pillow to lay at the foot of the hospital bed, instead. He rests his head on his arms and stares up at the wall behind a mop of greasy hair, the glassy panel lit up with every little detail. The screen says his heart’s beating and his brain’s bright with sedative-laced dreams. 

The screen says his brother’s all here, under all this shit. Hoses and wires and tubes. That clean pile of bandages hiding the mess of his chest.

He finds the jagged line of the heart rate monitor. Memorizes the steady peaks and valleys. Wonders if he can line his own heartbeat up, if he lies here and breathes right.

Breathes with the ventilator - slow rise, slow fall - and makes it a few minutes before he finds himself feeling starved for air. Takes a greedy draught and buries his face against his arms, trying to ignore the feel of his pulse in his throat, in the stupid little cut in his finger that’s just starting to throb.

They turned up at his work.

He watched the cop talking to Chloe and thought, _Someone’s in some shit._ Right up until the cop was spotting him across the kitchen.

Recognizing him, and moving his way.

They said it was about his brother, and Quinn felt a shitty little surge of relief when he stepped out the front door and saw they already had Liam with him, waiting in the squad car. Liam looking pale, but fine.

He thought, _Other brother, then._

And then he thought: _How bad can it be?_

 _An incident,_ they said at the restaurant. _A shooting,_ they said in the car.

_Can’t be that bad._

Just an incident.

Just some surgery.

Digging the bullet out like in all the movies, right? Warped slug dinging in the pan, and they’re all done.

Except the hours kept going, and they kept letting these piecemeal things through.

Shot three times and left to bleed out in some shitty warehouse district by an android.

 _How stupid do you have to be,_ Quinn keeps thinking. Their dad’s made it thirty years on the job without getting shot. (Terrible fucking luck for the rest of them.) Connor’s been at it, what - three? 

How fucking _stupid--_

The only one at the scene was another android, one Liam knew. He perked up and asked, ‘Tina?’ and the cop nodded along, and Quinn sat there like a fool, wondering who the hell Tina was.

A tiny little copbot, it turns out. She settles in like she owns the place and Quinn’s fine with that, he decides, after he watches her boss around that hulking Hank motherfucker that’s twice her size.

An ‘incident’ and a ‘shooting’ and a lot of vague explanations from an MP with her hands buried in her pockets. _There was a lot of damage,_ she said.

It wasn’t until Connor was in recovery that they laid things out properly. Explained how much damage _they_ did, because his heart wasn’t beating when he got to the ER.

Because he was dead, for a little while.

That whole twin vibe thing is bunk. 

Around the time Quinn was talking shit with the other line cooks and prepping the night’s cassoulet, a nice soft-spoken trauma doctor was cracking his brother’s chest open and keeping his heart going with her own hand, one Quinn shook a few hours later, right before she explained all of that in her nice soft-spoken voice.

But how bad could it be, he kept thinking.

Not that bad, surely.

Quinn hadn’t even noticed.

He breathes with the vent: slow rise, slow fall. He dreams what he keeps dreaming. That prying tension in his chest hooking stale memories and twisting them together, old and new.

He stands on the tile of their nice northside kitchen in their nice northside house and he stares at the blood spotted on his dad’s knuckles.

(More than there’d been, in reality; just a smear and a dab, then. The smell of whiskey, and Quinn’d never bothered to ask if he got drunk before or after.)

He stands in a seventeen-year-old’s skin and asks, “Where is he?”

And Dad leans back in the chair and regards him with cold apathy.

He says nothing in the dreams, but back then Dad had said, _Gone_ , and, _what did you expect?_ Quinn knew he was a fucking liar, of course, but--

Quinn saw the spots of blood on his dad’s knuckles and he was young and naive enough to think, for a single, frantic moment that he’d finally done it.

In the dream, in his memories, he turns on his heel and runs. Again and again.

Follows red drying dark on the hardwood, up the stairs and back. Every fear he’s ever had - before and since - he lines up with sprinting up those stairs, and finds them all lacking. 

Nothing really compares.

Not with his childish certainty that his dad had finally gotten fed up with his quiet, conniving brother, finally hit him hard enough, hurt him bad enough that he couldn’t hide it.

Decided not to hide it. Decided to follow through.

The drips and drabs become streaks and tacky puddles that smear under his sneakers as he follows old resentments up the stairs and around; he was _gone_ , he _left--_

Old resentments and old fears, curdling.

That dream numb slipping over him like a cowl as he drops to his knees by the closet door. Running his hand through Connor’s hair, clotted and tangled.

He breathes steadily, an artificial rise and fall. He stares ahead with glassy eyes, and Quinn leans forward and shushes him as he reaches for the gap they’ve carved into him, reaches for that ball of muscle.

Feels his brother’s heart in his hand, dense and cold.

He wakes to the same semi-dark, tasting bile, just as bone-weary as before. He finds the pulse trace first, watches the EKG jump and twitch.

Reaches out tentatively to the hand arranged neatly on top of the sheets, slotting his fingers awkwardly between Connor’s. His skin’s warm. Warm enough. They say he’ll be fine. They say everything’s looking good, that they got everything in time, that he’ll be the same when he wakes.

 _The same,_ Quinn keeps thinking, as he lets Connor’s hand go and stumbles into the bathroom to wash his face with cold water. _I don’t know what that means._

Connor left. He didn’t come back. Quinn came home to bloody knuckles and empty dresser drawers, hastily packed; Connor was out of their lives in one afternoon, leaving Quinn and Liam to Dad, and Quinn hated him for it.

It was one more year. What was _one more year_ , why did he have to _push_ \-- ended up out on his ass at seventeen, nothing but the car they’d bought with their collective savings and a duffel full of clothes to show for it. Connor finished high school by the skin of his teeth, got into the police academy as soon as he was old enough.

Quinn didn’t give Dad the chance to be pissed off. As soon as he turned eighteen and got a lease secured, he packed Liam up and went. They transferred Liam’s guardianship in a lawyer’s office, the cheapest one Quinn could find. Fees paid mostly with Connor’s belated buyout of the car.

All Dad said as he shoved the papers Quinn’s way was, “That’s the last thing you’re getting from me.”

Quinn made damn sure of that.

Connor left, and the person that came back was distant and careful; tread around Quinn’s anger as carefully as he’d tread around Dad, and Quinn hated him for that as much as he hated him for leaving. He pushed him to arms’ length and kept him there, just within reach. For Liam’s sake.

He sat in a waiting room elbow-to-elbow with all these people he didn’t recognize, waiting on some other Connor. 

He watched his little brother hug a tiny cop he didn’t know, and saw her face fracture apart with surprise and tightly-contained grief as that treacherous LED flashed gold and red.

He chased his jackass father down a back hallway, fury like a hot coal. Wanted to scream, “You haven’t even said his _name_ since--” That gigantic deviant stepped in his way, blotting Perkins out like he was nothing. A bad memory, best forgotten.

They said he’d be the same and Quinn thinks, _I have to catch up on that._

But he’s determined to. He’ll be here when Connor wakes up; to line up all the pieces again, old and new, and make them fit.

He mills around the window, staring out on the silver band of the river lit up with gray pre-dawn. He runs a hand through Connor’s hair - tries to push down that stubborn curl that neither of them can tame, and fails. 

He pulls the armchair a little closer and takes a seat to wait.


	4. Connor

Connor’s aware of the weight first. Wet and cloying. It takes a long time to open his eyes, and even then it’s only to the gray blur of a ceiling.

He turns his head and squints past streaks and blooms of too-bright morning light. Quinn’s here. 

He thinks he must be some kind of sick, because Quinn looks worried, leaning across pristine white sheets. He says something Connor can’t hear. He’s distracted by the uncomfortable tug of that weight at his chest, a pressure in his throat he can’t clear.

He tries to breathe in and can’t. That weight presses him down, only relenting with a click and a hiss.

He feels a dim, distant panic, before he’s slipping under again.

Waking only in half-dreams. Familiar voices; Hank’s low grumble, and Quinn demanding, “No _way_ , show me again--”

Tina, sounding close and rushed, saying, “You’re a stubborn bastard, you know that, right? I need you to be stubborn now, you hear me?”

Choking on that metallic wash of fear, being _crushed_ under it--

\--before he’s down again.

He cracks heavy eyelids to watch Hank deal out cards onto the white sheets.

His father picks up the hand he’s been dealt, considers it with a bitter little smile. “You try to teach him, but it won’t stick.”

Hank nods in agreement, lays another hand down. His forearm sparks where they’d burned him down through skin, through plating, straight through to to the wiring.

“Won’t learn,” Hank mutters. “He doesn’t learn.”

“ _Dense_ ,” Dad says. “That’s what he is. And always with the _lying_ \-- but he never learned how to bluff.”

He can’t breathe very well. Something sitting on his chest, pinning him down. But he knows he shouldn’t think about it. Shouldn’t look too closely. Hank’s murmured reply shakes apart, low resonant hums.

_stubborn i need you to be stubborn_

_but i’m not_  
_I’m not at all_  
_I’m--_

Late nights and old bruises and a gray ceiling, yellowing splotches of old water-stained topography.

Tired, very tired, and alone.

The next time he wakes, there’s an android he doesn’t know. She rests a hand on his shoulder, bearing a palm down gently. He wants to shift away, but can’t. 

His vision narrows down to the blue sway of her LED, that blurred gray ceiling. He’s nodding and blinking away clinging damp as she explains he can breathe on his own now. That they’re going to remove a tube from his throat, and he needs to exhale slowly as they do.

Someone’s hand wraps around his.

He exhales, or tries. He chokes and sputters to full waking as something catches in his chest and _tears_ , leaves him wanting to scrabble desperately away, push back into the chipped brickwork and gasp wet, heavy breaths until he can’t breathe anymore.

Warmth like a runnel, spilling up his arms and snaring up the pain, bundling it away. That old weight drags him down again. The hand stays; firm and steady, even as he goes.

When he wakes again, he finds he can finally swallow around the scratch in his throat and breathe in his own hitching, uneven way.

“You tuned in this time?”

“Quinn,” Connor rasps.

He reaches up for a weird dry tickle in his nose, but Quinn sits forward and grabs his wrist before he can hook the plastic line there. “Don’t. That’s supposed to stay put.”

Connor doesn’t need much excuse to let his hand drop. Even that motion made him ache. “Am I sick?”

“Yeah, kinda,” Quinn says, voice low. “You got shot.”

He did. He remembers that. Connor turns his head and blinks at a night sky, lit from underneath with the dull blues and yellows of the city glow. Liam’s here, looking too old for his confused head. Connor’s mind wanders somewhere between a brick wall and thinking, _Someone should tell Dad. Did someone tell Dad?_

_He’s going to be upset. I fucked up._

But he stares at Liam - not twelve but sixteen, now - and thinks, _No, Dad told you to go. Remember?_

Dad’s fist uncurling with some monumental effort, letting him drop to the tiles. Sitting down heavily in the chair and staring a hundred yards past him. Telling him to get out.

Promising in the shaking edge of his voice that he won’t let him drop, next time.

Liam is Quinn’s responsibility, not Dad’s; and Connor isn’t anyone’s family, anymore. Quinn shouldn’t even be here. Liam shouldn’t be here. It’s late.

He works his throat and swallows back the cotton in his mouth enough to say, “Late.” It’s easier to exhale single syllables than try for anything more complicated. 

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Quinn says. “It’s Saturday, he doesn’t have class tomorrow. You want anything? A drink, or something?”

Quinn jumps out of the armchair and sweeps out the door before Connor’s done much more than bob his chin.

Connor waits. Swallows again, tries to focus on the ache in his throat. This small, simple thing he’s felt a hundred times before. He can pretend it’s a bad cold. (He can pretend he had a late night with Quinn, that they snuck out to some empty field and hollered like banshees into the dark only because they could.) 

Because he’s pretty sure if he thinks about anything below his throat, thinks on the heavy slack of his ribs, the struggle of every breath, he’ll wake up that slumbering hurt. Bring everything back in screaming, searing detail.

He swallows down on an aching throat and watches Liam: folded awkwardly into a chaise lounge, arms wrapped around his chest. He breathes slow and easy, face half-buried in a lump of pillow.

“They said you could have these,” Quinn says. He hand-feeds him a flat wafer of ice. 

He wonders if he should tell him to go, if that’s the right thing to do - but he’s feeling small and selfish and tired. He likes having them here. He likes knowing they’re safe, up above it all.

The nurse android from before comes back. She introduces herself as Singer. She gives him something that makes him feel strange, but the ice chip is working nicely; frees up his tongue enough for him to ask, “Do you? Sing?”

“No, but I like sewing,” she says matter-of-factly.

Connor muses on that for awhile, as she bustles about and asks how he’s feeling - _tired and heavy,_ he thinks, but he says, “Okay.” She warns him he’ll likely start feeling it soon, and shows him a button to press for when he does.

He must still look puzzled as she sweeps out the door. Quinn laughs at him. “Like the sewing machine. Get it?”

Connor blinks. Nods, slow.

Connor asks, “Will you stay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and reaches for the cup of ice chips. “I’m sticking around.”

He steals one for himself, doles the other to Connor. Then he sets the cup down and sits by the foot of the bed, pillowing his head on his arms. He looks bad; unshaven, his hair swept messily back.

Connor drifts off thinking about how they used to sneak out of the house and shout at the stars, just because they could. Wet grass slapping against their ankles as they ran through the fields out back of the house. It was best in the wintertime, though. When the cold would carry their voices for miles.

He falls asleep feeling that old ache in the back of his throat, still.

He wakes to sunlight and no one. An empty lounge chair. No more familiar warmth at the foot of his bed.

But as he's turning his head towards the folded up pile of blankets on the lounge chair, he hears a grumbled, “Shit,” and a squeaking chair.

After some scuffling, Tina leans over him, getting that frown she gets when she’s scanning him. “They said you were waking up more, but I wasn’t sure-- hey! You are, aren’t you? Long time no see, rookie.”

“Slow down,” Connor complains in his asthmatic wheeze. Tina grabs for a proper cup of water, this time; a big plastic thermos, with a bigger plastic straw. She jabs it his way.

He tries to bear his elbows into the mattress and sit up a little, but Tina discourages it with a palm on his collarbone. “Here, I got it.” She shifts the bed, instead, gets him up just enough to hold the cup himself.

It’s only then that Connor realizes Hank’s there; looming in the corner of the room, looking--

Uncertain, mostly. He doesn’t know that he’s ever seen Hank looking anything other than pissed off.

And then Hank’s catching his stare and _retreating._ Disappearing out the door without a word.

Tina’s saying, “Quinn and Liam went to get some breakfast, they’ll be back in a while. How are you feeling?”

“I think I’m high,” Connor says matter-of-factly.

Tina snorts. “Yeah? They promised they had you on the good stuff.” She extracts the cup from his hand before he can drop it.

She smiles wanly when he asks how bad it is. All she says is, “You’re healing up fast.”

A doctor explains everything, and by the end of her spiel he’s feeling more tired than he was before.

It’s all an abstract thing. Running a hand down his chest, all he can feel is bandages and a dull ache. Not the wire holding his ribs together, letting things heal. They say it won’t scar badly. He can’t even feel it. He can’t even--

It’s hard to bring his memories of the shooting into some kind of coherent order. He’d gone into shock fast, hadn’t felt-- much, that he can remember. Most of what he remembers was drowning, something thick caught in his throat.

He stumbled back into the wall and his leg gave out, before he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Someone to help, he thought, Tina, maybe--

But the fingernails dug in sharp as they turned him roughly. Not a face he knew. Human eyes, _hating._ But the rough shape of an LED carved into her temple - bone-white and sparking blue-black, where the damage had gone deep enough - as if someone had crudely reminded her of what she’d tried to hide.

She pressed something hot against his ribs. Fired one last spiteful shot.

The one that almost killed him.

That’s what he tells Tina, in so many words. Once the doctor’s gone and it’s just the two of them. His rushed attempt at a witness statement, before Quinn and Liam get back.

He wants to ask if he should tell DPD all of that, if he should maybe-- leave parts out. For Jericho’s sake. But Tina cuts him short, explaining,“They already have her in custody.”

“What are they going to do with her?”

“They haven’t decided. But that’s not up to me and you, alright? Let the better-paid folks worry about that.”

He worries.

He doesn’t want an android decommissioned for lashing out in fear. He knows that.

(But he worries. _He_ fears.

She hated him. _Hated him._

One last spiteful shot.)

Liam drapes him with an awkward improvised hug, as soon as he gets back. Connor grasps weakly at the back of his shirt, assuring him, “Hey. I’m good, Liam. I get the good drugs.”

Drugs that make him light up bright with the way Liam laughs against his shoulder, like he’s hearing the sound for the first time. 

Quinn’s a shadow on the edge of the room, one foot away from an easy exit.

“Maybe I can finally win something now,” Liam says as he straightens up. “Tina keeps beating us at everything. Spades, poker, you name it.”

“You were playing poker?”

“Hank taught us Texas Hold ‘Em.”

Connor hitches a breath, feeling his grip on reality slip, a little.

“Was Dad here?” he asks, voice dry.

“No,” Quinn says. “He never showed up.”

Tina breaks the beat of silence, redirecting back: “Full disclosure, I had to drag Hank here by the ear. But he stuck around on his own. I think the grinch is starting to grow a heart.”

“And all I had to do was get shot,” Connor says.

“One hell of a way to impress the boss,” Tina agrees amiably. At Liam’s look of mild horror, she adds: “Don’t ever do it again.”

“He can come in if he wants,” Connor says. He can see the occasional stiff-angled elbow peeking through the window.

Tina’s smile is on the approving side, this time. 

A strange little victory - Hank being awkwardly cordial by the end of his bed, folding into a too-small chair, asking how he’s feeling. Connor is beginning to suspect he’s going to be asked that a lot.

As Connor starts to doze off, Hank eases up enough to tell Liam, “Alright, kid. You want to beat Tina?” 

He drifts off watching his boss teach his little brother sleight of hand.

The pain catches up, just as Singer warned him.

He wants to crack a joke about how bad she did stitching him up. A real hack job, barbed wire wrapped crookedly and cinched tight; he wakes up sweating and shaking with the pain, something he can’t crawl away from. He writhes and grasps at the thin cloth of the gown, stifles the whine crawling up his throat in short, rasping gasps. 

Quinn’s still here, pale and tired, and he wants to shout at him to go. (But Liam’s still here, just as pale, just as tired - holding his hand and looking _worried_ \- so he doesn’t.)

They give him something stronger. 

That’s how it goes for awhile: sleeping and waking, sometimes to pain, sometimes not. Sometimes to a hand on his shoulder, sometimes not.

Even with the nightmares, he always expects to wake alone.

And he does, on occasion. The in-between hours when Quinn and Liam are both gone for work or school or a proper meal and sleep in their own beds. He wakes alone and rides the discomfort, sitting up more and more because they’re making him do that, now. Grateful to be able to do that alone; sweat and gasp around the wires cinching his chest shut without anyone watching.

But most of the time, he doesn’t.

He wakes to Liam with a tablet in his lap, working on one project or another; Quinn shooting the shit, his favorite pastime. Talking to Tina or Hank or Singer. Swapping Michelin star kitchen drama for Tina’s beat cop highlight reel, Hank’s stories from working as a bouncer, Singer’s gruesome medical tales. Liam listens to the latter with a particular fascination.

Everyone talks easily around him, but awkwardly _to_ him. Quinn’s early attempts are faltering, stutter-stop conversations in Connor’s more coherent and self-conscious moments, but he digs his heels in, demands equivalent trade, kitchentalk for Connor’s cop stories.

He’s good at this, when he wants to be. Making Connor feel like he’s only got ears for him. Connor had almost forgotten what it was like.

The first time Hank gets caught alone with him, he makes it five minutes of uncomfortable silence before he snaps, “Jesus, stop looking at me like you’re in _trouble_ , do you want me to go? I’ll go.”

Connor says, “No.” 

Hank sits back in a chair he’s almost too big for, arms crossed. When Connor asks about work, he looks visibly relieved. Launches into a long diatribe about City Hall throwing up bullshit roadblocks, the state legislature getting in a pissing contest with the judicial system over the fine print on the new citizenship amendments.

Connor’s surprised, a little curious at how Hank stops and listens, the few times he interjects to ask a question, redirect Hank’s rambling to clarify something. 

Realizing abruptly that Hank’s seeing _him_ , now. Hearing him.

Seeing the same ease steal over him that he had with Liam, or when he’s trading snappy retorts with Quinn. Connor feels like he went away for awhile, and everyone changed around him.

He doesn’t say anything about it, and neither does Hank. He thinks maybe the both of them are afraid that any acknowledgment would shatter this fragile thing. 

So they don’t. 

All they do is talk, and listen.

Tina’s refreshingly the same. She sends him things on his phone at all hours, and when Connor suggests she should get back to work, she only says _You think I’m not blazing through paperwork right now? Get on my level, meatbag._

She comes by between shifts, dragging him out of bed and making him hobble the halls in his bent-over stoop. She’s relentless, only returning him to the sanctity of his prison bed when he’s drenched in sweat. 

“Gonna have you jumping over fences properly in no time,” she says over his wheezing.

“You showed that to Quinn, didn’t you.”

“I absolutely did. You kidding? That video’s my best work.”

Connor groans.

By the time he works up the nerve to ask about his apartment, he’s a week away from the next month’s rent. Quinn explains he’s been dealing with his landlord; but he deploys Liam, puppy eyes and all, to explain that they negotiated an early end to his lease. “Since you’ll be off a few more weeks, we thought it’d be best if you moved in with us.” 

“Stay where we can keep an eye on you,” Quinn adds. “Help out on the rent.”

Liam elbows him, but Quinn shrugs. “What? I give up half my bedroom, he gets to pay rent.”

It’s Quinn’s brand of currency, the kind he knows Connor will take. Nothing given, only offered.

Connor still tries to protest. “I can sleep on the couch--”

“Shut up, you’re not sleeping on the couch,” Quinn declares, and leaves it at that.

Connor wakes to someone fiddling with the oxygen cannula one afternoon. 

He’s wrung out and more than a little doped up after a morning jaunt with Tina, so he watches with a half-awake fascination as the man runs careful hands over the plastic, chasing out a kink in the line. His fingers move with a practiced surety.

Connor asks, “Are you a nurse?” 

The man pauses, considering. “Used to be.” Then he folds his hands in his lap and takes a seat. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”

He’s wearing a baseball cap, pulled almost low enough to cover mismatched eyes. But he tilts it back as he asks, “Would you like some company?” and Connor nods.

Connor forgets to ask for his name. He already seems familiar. Stupidly good-looking.

He drifts through their conversation pleasantly, idle talk for awhile, about how he’s been, what he’d like to do when he gets out.

He doesn’t know what finally clicks everything into his addled mind. He’s been too distracted with the way the man talks with his hands, these fluid, expansive motions, to think too long on the mismatched eyes, the familiar cadence of his voice, but it _does_ click, and Connor sits up a little straighter, saying, “You’re Markus.”

“I am.”

“ _The_ Markus,” Connor says.

“The Markus,” Markus agrees, amused.

“Should you be here?” he chokes.

“Opinions vary,” Markus admits. “But I thought I owed you a visit. You’ve been doing good work.”

He must not hide his expression well, because Markus cracks a smile. “Don’t look so surprised. Some of the people you’ve brought into Jericho have spoken highly of you.”

Connor doesn’t know what to say. Can’t even think of many distinct faces from the blur of exhaustion these last few months. The ones he can remember were frightened, quiet people, once he’d convinced them he didn’t mean any harm.

“Some. I wasn’t that good at catching them.”

“But you made an impact on those you did manage to reach.”

“I just talk to them, if I can,” he says, feeling a flush rising on his cheeks. All he’s heard these last few months is what a shit catch rate he has. Hearing something like praise just-- doesn’t compute.

Certainly not from _Markus._

Markus who’s smiling warmly and correcting him: “You listened. That’s what they needed.”

He leaves him with a thank you and a handshake, and a quiet laugh when Connor blurts, “You can visit again. If you want. If you can, I mean.”

To his greater surprise, Markus agrees. “I’d like that.”

He informs Tina, “That was _the_ Markus,” when she steps back in the room.

Tina stares at him, surprise mingling with horrified amusement.

“He’s nice,” Connor adds.

(Later - still a little high - he informs Hank, “Markus told me I’m good at my job.”

“The hell does he know,” Hank says. And then, with equal irritation: “I never said you weren’t.”)

Markus never does turn up again at the hospital. (Maybe for the better; Connor doesn’t remember much of their talk - definitely doesn’t think about it more than a handful of times - and he’s increasingly suspicious of Tina’s doe-eyed rendition.) 

They let him go at noon on a Tuesday. It’s just Quinn and him and the old beater car they’d bought together in high school - Connor’s in full, now, and held together by more bondo than actual car.

Connor expects Quinn to head for his and Liam’s apartment, but he takes the fastest road the car legally can south, instead, explaining that there’s still a few things at Connor’s old place. 

Connor makes his slow way up the cigarette-scattered staircase, expecting Quinn to start ranting at any time about what a shithole he’s been living in, these last few years. 

But Quinn doesn’t say anything. He unlocks the door and steps over the threshold and steps inside, pointedly ignoring Connor’s quiet embarrassment.

Most of the furniture’s gone. “We donated what was still, y’know. Mostly functional,” Quinn says. “Kitchen table didn’t make it through the door in one piece, though.”

When Connor doesn’t say anything - marveling mostly at how the place almost looks a liveable size when there isn’t anything in it - Quinn shifts awkwardly on his feet. “When you get your own place again, I can help you find some new stuff--”

“I’m not hurting for money,” Connor says. He’s still a little unnerved at this new conciliatory Quinn. 

“So what the hell were you doing living here?” 

He sounds a little closer to the Quinn he’s used to, there. Sharp and irritable, but this anger’s directionless.

There’s been a lot of that lately, too. Simmering, aimless frustration. Connor’s been wondering where it’s going to land, and when. When they’re going to shed this new skin and go back to their old lives, the ones where they exist on the periphery of each other.

“It was cheap,” Connor says. He debates saying more. Explaining what a _relief_ it was, getting this place. An asshole landlord that didn’t look at his age that closely, and was willing to accept cash.

How he slept on the floor for awhile before he could afford a bed, but he didn’t mind at all, because it was _warm_ , and it wasn’t the car.

He doesn’t think Quinn wants to hear that.

There’s more he could say, too; why he stayed here, why he never got more than the bare minimum of what he needed. Where everything’s been going. But part of him selfishly wants to keep that locked up with all the other secrets. 

That old mantra of _Quinn doesn’t know, Quinn doesn’t_ want _to know--_

Quinn mutters, “Yeah, no shit,” scuffing a toe on a scorched patch of carpet. “I got your security deposit back, by the way. Well, Hank did. You should’ve seen your slumlord’s face.”

“Thanks,” Connor replies. He can imagine. Hank’s got a way of making the windows rattle with his presence alone. It’s still a little surreal, thinking of _that_ Hank on his side. 

He passed out in an alleyway, and everything changed.

He shuffles into the kitchenette. The whiteboard on the fridge is still there, a cardboard box of plates and kitchen things sitting on the counter. “We weren’t sure if you wanted to keep any of that,” Quinn explains.

He cards through it. Two plates, two cups, two sets of silverware, because he’d never needed anything more. A few utensils, all various levels of secondhand. “It’s fine. We can donate it.”

The bedroom’s already empty, the dresser and all its contents gone. Squares of moderately clean carpet outline where the old furniture used to be crammed in. The only thing left in the closet is a dangling string for the light bulb.

Quinn trails after him, giving the ceiling fan a musing appraisal. It’s one screw away from total collapse; Connor gave up on using it after the second-to-last screw got shaken free a year ago. 

“I _did_ already get your security deposit back, so--” Quinn stretches up onto his toes, reaching for a dusty fan blade. Just a little testing tug.

“Quinn,” Connor warns.

Quinn groans, dropping back onto his heels. “Where’s your sense of fun, lawman?”

“I never had a sense of fun.”

"You’re right. That was _my_ job.”

Connor glances up at a water-stained ceiling, blinking back that old heavy feeling. Thinking about - all of it, and nothing.

“Dad really didn’t show?” he asks.

This time, Quinn tells the truth. “He tried. I told him to fuck off. He’s not our family.”

Those words hang for awhile, Connor standing here and staring at an empty closet, feeling like he’s finally taking a clean breath of air. Shaking the last few clinging threads of his old life loose.

“You want to know why I stayed here?”

“Yeah, c’mon,” Quinn says, still glancing up at the fan, temptation obvious. “Tell me you at least had a cheap drug dealer for a neighbor or something.”

“I was thinking about a house,” he explains. 

Quinn stares at him.

“For the three of us, I mean. Nothing huge, but I’ve got a decent downpayment saved up. Some extra for Liam’s college.”

He expects-- everything, and nothing. He expects Quinn to balk or redirect or bitch that that’s no excuse for living in a slum and dragging that poor oil-hemorrhaging car another 50,000 miles past its expiration date. 

But Quinn considers, and then he says, “That’d be good.”

Just that, and a little sideways smile. 

Connor smiles in return. A small thing, but honest.

Then he makes a beatific gesture with his hand. “Alright, do it.” 

Quinn grins as he jumps up and catches the fan by the light fixture, giving it a firm tug. It comes free easier than he expects; with the wet rip of tearing drywall and a snap of electrical cables it’s crashing to the floor, two of the blades snapping like cardboard. 

Quinn grabs a hold of him and they both dance back, their surprise collapsing into laughter. Quinn’s hand stays on his elbow as the both of them double over, cackling.

The only thing that cuts them short is the sound of Ms. Parsons jamming a broomstick against the ceiling below them.

Quinn tugs at him, choking through a laugh. “That’s probably our cue.”

A second hard rap and a muffled curse gets them both jumping and heading out. Quinn gathers up the box off the counter as the both of them swipe away tears on their sleeves; Connor pulls out the spare key, takes one last circuit of the ratty carpet. It'd been a home, for awhile. Served its purpose.

Quinn bumps his elbow, gesturing for him to get the door.

The two of them school their expressions to conspiratorial smirks and step back out into a muggy summer day.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are much loved and cherished! <3
> 
> I can be found over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/SkadizzleRoss) and the [ New ERA Discord.](https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm)


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